My Mind is Not My Own
by Sophia the Scribe
Summary: ...but you guard my heart. (Shaak Ti, Kamino, and the tragedy of Order 66)


Jedi Master Shaak Ti knelt alone in her assigned quarters on Kamino. Her face was to the window, the wild storm and lashing rain echoing the turmoil of the galaxy; but at her back were the Force-signatures of thousands of clones—her people, her children—and even in the darkness that shrouded the galaxy so heavily she found something resembling peace.

Until, as breaking glass, the Force-signatures shattered and reformed into something alien. She gasped, reaching out to them, trying to answer pounding questions she could not even formulate.

But then the tragedy of the Jedi fighting a war they never wanted coalesced into a single point of blinding agony, and the betrayed pain and grief of thousands reverberated through the Living Force. Tears unbidden streaked down Master Ti's face as she bent forward, leaning her forehead against the cool, unyielding transparisteel of the window. With a shaking hand she grasped her lightsaber, wanting nothing more in the world than to defend her brothers and sisters from the menace of…of…

Her eyes snapped open.

The tramp of regulation-boots echoed through the hallway, and a wave of irrational anger echoed through the Force.

_Good soldiers follow orders_.

The clones were slaughtering the Jedi.

Her breaths came faster as the pieces fit together, forming an image of the destruction of all she knew, all she loved. A terrible image that had almost, _almost_, been avoided.

_Oh Fives_, she thought, fiercely sorrowful, _I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Tup died in vain, and…_

The thought perished in a wash of regret, and, slowly and deliberately, she laid down her lightsaber on the floor before her knees. She let the pain carried by the Force's currents wash through her, mingling her own with that desperate flood, and gathered together from the corners of her soul every bit of love she carried—for the betrayed Generals and their enslaved troops, for the innocents they saved and those they could not, for the younglings in the Temple and the Padawans and Crechemasters who were dying to defend them, for the world with all its bright stars and mingled griefs—and dropped her shields.

The door was blasted open.

Troopers swarmed into the room, some silent, some shouting "Jedi traitors!" or "Good soldiers follow orders" or merely incoherent yells. And to each enslaved soul Shaak reached, caressing the minds she once knew so well with sprinkles of selfless love and whispers of _forgive me, my son_. Beyond the room she continued, begging the Force for nothing more _time_, time to farewell every clone in the facilities, from the oldest maintenance-workers to the fierce child-soldiers who sought her death to the youngest embryos in their growth-tubes who would never even live to be decanted.

And time she was granted, for with her caress the maddening mantra of _execute order sixty-six_ was for a moment stilled, and the clones faltered.

"General!" some of them whispered, but their minds cried _Mother_, and for a blessed instant their thoughts were their own; the grateful love of a thousand children washed over the Jedi who had never expected such devotion, and for a moment even the river of sorrow that was the Force lightened and swelled with this simple beauty.

But all things draw to an end, and even the stars burn out, and the machinations of the Sith run deep indeed. Before their thoughts were even completed, the wicked workings snapped again through their unwilling minds—hatred rose again in their eyes, replacing their affection with cries of "Traitor!"—they raised their blasters as one—

And Jedi Master Shaak Ti died, unresisting, at the hands of her own children, surrounded by manufactured rage and the sins of sinless hearts.

Yet through the Force her dying thoughts echoed long and tenderly: _I could never hurt you_, and _I forgive you, _and _I love you, my sons_.

* * *

A/N: I wrote this story with Shaak Ti of the Clone Wars in mind-particularly referencing the Inhibitor Chip Arc-but unfortunately forgot that (according to _Revenge of the Sith_) she was on Coruscant, not Kamino, during Order 66. I hope you could enjoy the story, despite that canonical blunder, as a possible exploration of what would have happened, had she been with her children during Operation Knightfall rather than in the Jedi Temple.


End file.
